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Project Proposal Abstract: Current model projections suggest that, by the end of the 21st century, climate conditions like those of 1988 (the year of the well-known Yellowstone Fires) will represent close to the average year rather than an extreme year. This change will fundamentally alter the potential of western forests to sequester atmospheric carbon. Here, we hypothesize that vegetation communities will contribute differentially to future landscape C flux because of different sensitivities to future climate and fire combinations. We ask: (1) How great a change in climate and fire regime would be required to shift each of the dominant vegetation communities in the GYE from a net C sink to a net C source? (2) Do current projections indicate that changes of this magnitude are likely to occur in the next century, and if so, where do they occur? And (3) what are the integrated effects of changing climate, vegetation, and fire on spatial patterns of carbon flux across landscapes? We will combine state-of-the-art downscaled climate data, statistical fire modeling and ecosystem process modeling to explore landscape C flux in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Our results will (1) advance understanding of the effects of extreme climate on landscape C flux, (2) identify when, where, and under what range of conditions shifts in climate and fire could alter future C storage, (3) constrain understanding of landscape vulnerability to future climate and fire, and (4) help determine the magnitude of forest C feedbacks to climate. A large portion of the Rockies and Cascades are likely to experience similar moisture deficits as the GYE, suggesting our results will be broadly applicable to heterogeneous landscapes in the western U.S. Moreover, our research will push the frontiers of fire ecology to develop spatially and temporally explicit maps of carbon flux that can be used to manage western landscapes in the face of climate change.